From Tornado Chasers to Sports Media Titans: The Unplanned Playbook
Ditch the degree and dial the phone: two TV veterans turned a $12k gamble into a buyout by a global sports giant.
Andrew Carter and Ben Walnick didn’t launch Let It Fly Media with an MBA or a seed round. They left the broadcast trenches—tornadoes and high school football for him, meteorology for her—and pooled six grand to cold-call potential clients. Their only assets were a shared belief that storytelling was escaping the static of television and moving to the digital fast lane. They embraced the chaos of a market that was either too slow (big agencies) or too risky (freelancers), and found their niche in delivering newsroom speed with creative polish.
Their breakout moment arrived at the 2018 PGA Championship. A serious inquiry from the PGA of America validated their scrappy model, proving that grit could outmaneuver bureaucracy. That momentum eventually caught the eye of Two Circles, a global marketing firm servicing the NFL and Premier League. The 2024 acquisition wasn’t just an exit; it was a promotion to the Autobahn, allowing them to scale their “art and science” approach to the highest levels of sport.
Advice from the acquisition winners:
- Kill “Paralysis by Analysis”: The greatest form of momentum is action. Move fast, learn faster.
- Serve the Story, Not Your Ego: True influence comes from listening to the client’s needs, not imposing your own ego.
- The Ledger of Relationships: Never burn a bridge. Persistence and communication are the currency of opportunity.
- Own the Outcome: Entrepreneurship is total accountability. You own the losses just as you celebrate the wins.
Ultimately, success for Carter and Walnick isn’t measured by the acquisition price, but by the culture they built on the field. From a two-person shop to a custom Kansas City office, they proved that if you love the work and the people you do it with, the scoreboard takes care of itself.
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